First Draft November, Days 4 & 5
Progress: 3,984 words. Total word count: 9,258.
Day 4
Today’s word count: 1,984. Total word count: 7,258.
Today’s lesson from The Novel Writing Workshop (free for all this November) is on voice! I didn’t struggle much with this one because, after years of writing, I’m confident in my writer voice. I think. But I still gave the exercises a try because they’ve all been super helpful so far.
The first was a freewriting exercise, which I always enjoy. The second was from a book called If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland. This was also a freewriting exercise, but about a childhood memory instead of something you hate.
The third exercise was more closely related to the novel I’m trying to write. It consisted in dictating a scene you want to include in your novel into a word processor. It’s like freewriting but… more. When I reread it, I made a short list of what I liked about it in terms of voice, and I added some margin comments of what didn’t work.
The third exercise was incredibly simple but it helped me start today’s writing with more purpose. It almost felt like I was writing by hand, crafting every sentence before writing it down, with a purpose in mind. It was a bit slower, but I really enjoyed it.
Today I wrote for three hours, and reached a word count of 1984, which is a wonderful coincidence. We’re totalling 7,258 words!
Oh, and today someone shared a trick in the FDN chat: Stop mid-sentence. And I did. We’ll see if that helps start tomorrow.
Day 5
Today’s word count: 2,000. Total word count: 9,258.
Today’s prompt was on the antagonist! And it answered the question:
Who, or what, is standing in your protagonist’s way? And how does that force respond when pressed?
Along this question, we got a prompt from Alan Watt’s famous The 90 Day Novel: to write a ten-minute dialogue between the character and (one of) their antagonist(s).
This exercise was relatively easy once I figured out who the antagonist was. But finding the antagonist was difficult. At the end, I settled for a character I hadn’t considered as an antagonist before because they constantly threaten to not support the “hero” in achieving their goals, but they always do. However, the hero soon realises their goals don’t align with their actual needs and desires. Therefore, the antagonist is actually stopping the hero from obtaining what they really want and need by reluctantly enabling them to achieve their goals. Does any of that make sense? Idk. It made sense when I wrote the dialogue.
But writing the dialogue, although easy, also allowed other questions to surface, and provided answers to many of them. I highly recommend this exercise! Perhaps it’s finally time to read the sworn-by book from which it came.
This morning, I wrote exactly 2,000 words. Before today’s prompt was released. We’re totalling 9,258 words. Who would’ve thought we’d stick to the plan? I didn’t. Anyway, I’m pleased with today so far. It’s been very productive, and I even got to take a nap!
Oh, about the trick of stopping mid-sentence. Love. It. I started writing earlier because I had the next few words ready in my head. It made starting much, much easier. And it made thinking about the story throughout the day much more productive. I sat down and somehow was always ready with the next word. Maybe it’s a coincidence. I stopped mid-sentence today, too. Let’s see how it goes tomorrow.
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